Inclined Martian Sandstone Beds Near 'Kimberley'

December 08, 2014

This image taken by the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover just north of the "Kimberley" waypoint shows beds of sandstone inclined to the southwest toward Mount Sharp and away from the Gale Crater rim. The inclination of the beds indicates build-out of sediment toward Mount Sharp. These inclined beds are interpreted as the deposits of small deltas fed by rivers flowing down from the crater rim to the north and building out into a lake to the south, where Mount Sharp is now.

The Mastcam's left-eye camera recorded the component frames of this mosaic on March 13, 2014, during the 569th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars. The color has been approximately white-balanced to resemble how the scene would appear under daytime lighting conditions on Earth. Figure A is a cropped version with a superimposed scale bar of 3 meters (about 10 feet).

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project's Curiosity rover. Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates the rover's Mastcam. For more information about Curiosity, visit http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.nasa.gov/msl.